ABSTRACT
There is nothing new about people making use of technical prostheses and portable machines. We add these objects to our bodies in order to overcome our innate-or acquired-weaknesses, or to make the body more effective in its relationship with the world:
Historically, the first wearable technical prosthesis was probably eyeglasses for long-sighted people, in about 1285 (Maldonado, 1994a). But it is certain that the first wearable machines, in the strict sense of the term, were the pocket watch (invented by John Harrison in 1762) and the wristwatch (the aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont commissioned the creation of the first one in 1907).
